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The nuclear weapons testing programme ordered by US President Donald Trump will not include any actual nuclear explosions, Energy Secretary Chris Wright clarified on Sunday. What we know about US nuclear weapon testing? Speaking to a news channel, Wright emphasised that the upcoming exercises are “system tests” rather than live detonations, aimed at verifying the readiness and reliability of the United States’ nuclear arsenal. “These are not nuclear explosions. These are what we call non-critical explosions,” Wright said during an interview on The Sunday Briefing. He explained that the tests would assess all other components of a nuclear weapon, such as triggering systems and safety mechanisms, to ensure they function correctly without triggering a chain reaction. The Department of Energy, which oversees America’s nuclear weapons testing, will use the data to evaluate new designs and modern replacements for ageing weapons. According to Wright, the new systems will be developed with improved performance and reliability compared to earlier versions. Trump’s nuclear weapon testing order President Trump announced last week that he had instructed the US military to restart nuclear weapons testing procedures, ending a 33-year hiatus since the last underground test. The timing of the declaration, just before his scheduled meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea, was widely viewed as a geopolitical signal to China and Russia amid growing global tensions. Reiterating his stance last Friday, Trump did not directly address whether the plan would include underground detonations similar to those conducted during the Cold War. US nuclear weapons The United States last carried out live nuclear tests in the 1960s through the 1980s, gathering vast scientific data on blast yields and environmental effects. Wright noted that modern advances in computing power and simulation technology now allow scientists to recreate those conditions virtually. “With our science and our computation power, we can simulate incredibly accurately exactly what will happen in a nuclear explosion,” he said. “Now we simulate what were the conditions that delivered that, and as we change bomb designs, what will they deliver?”
